Realtime Online Streaming with IOTA Payments
Simple, fast & anonymous payment system for multimedia streams.
Try Now! It's easy:
- Install Firefox Addon
- Fund Addon Wallet (Note our Faucet)
- Optionally, Setup Backup (Follow Instructions in Addon)
- Start Streaming, Setup is completed! (Demo)
INFO: Find more detailed installation steps below.
What is ROSI?
ROSI is an novel approach for a seamless payment method for streaming media.
It is designed with the importance of privacy in mind.
By design it does NOT need any user data, an account, browser tracking methods of any kind,
cookies, credit card data, etc.
There is some kind of ID - the ChannelID - which is changing regulary, is different for
every content-provider/user client combination and can also be manually changed whenever wanted,
so it is not easy to track eithter.
There is no need to create any user-account for a streaming service using ROSI -
Payments are settled in advance for some seconds of stream automatically by the ROSI-Addon.
How does it work?
ROSI utilizes a second layer technology called "Flash-Channels" on top of the feeless und fast
distributed ledger IOTA.
The browser addon is the central piece - every ROSI-enabled service website does request
every payment from the addon - which validates it (and therefor protects the users funds)
and if everything seems fine - creates flash-channels as needed and processes payments
by communicating with the content-providers payment handling server and signing the needed
transactions. The signing and payment process on flash-channels just takes a few seconds
(mostly depending on computer performance) and does not need any interaction with the
IOTA Ledger (the Tangle). Only the creation and closing of the channels need a standard
IOTA transaction each - which takes currently about 2 minutes to confirm (but the provider
can also choose to accept some flash-channel transactions before the "funding-transaction"
of the channel confirms, to further speed up this process).
So a typical stream payments request looks something like this:
[Website requests payment] -->
[Addon: New channel needed? Create / Continue old channel] -->
[Payment On Channel] --> [Payment finished]
It is the task of the website script to request payments and load streaming data from
the servers, only payments are handled by ROSI - Addon.
How can that be secure?
First of all: It isn't. - At least it is not 100% secure in the means of not paying
anything to a malicious streaming-provider.
BUT: Precautions have been taken to not pay much to any malicous actor:
The settings: The user can define maximum stream costs per minute - a central design choice
of ROSI - that the Addon accepts without asking the user to confirm. That way an
attacker cannot empty the wallet in short time without the user noticing.
The price per minute of a stream must be requested by the provider script in advance of
the first payment - and is displayed in the Extension's Popup window at any time.
If the price is higher than the before mentioned setting of the plugin - the user has to
confirm the start of the stream manually.
The Addon-Icon is also a a very important: Its color indicates the state of ROSI:
If it is gray no open website has requested anything from the Addon - It is in standby mode.
If it is red, a website has requested to initialize a provider - but no stream. Therefore
no stream-payments are possible in this state.
If it is orange, a website has requested to initialize a stream - this means under special
conditions one payment is possible (as specified in plugin settings - prepayment) but
no continous payments are possible in this state.
If it is green, a website has requested the start of a stream - in this state there are
payments possible - exactly as long as the payments are not exceeding the maximum price per
minute (ppm) of the started stream in a time period that is also set by the user
(current default: 2 min).
It should be noted here that multiple streams
can be in state initialized at the same time, but only one stream at a time can be in
state playing, not even if there are multiple providers registered.
How to Install (Extended)?
1. Download the lastest extension here.
2. Install by opening the downloaded file, Firefox should open a window and ask if you want to install the extension.
If That does not work, you can manually install it by opening about:addons on your Firefox, clicking on the
gear icon top right, clicking "Install Add-on From File" and now selecting the extension
file just downloaded.
3. After accpting certain requirements you should see the gray "R" icon. Click on this to get
to the main interface / popup of the addon. It will ask you to log in / create a backup account.
Note that while it is recommended to backup your wallet / channel - data it is not
necessary in any way to use every feature of ROSI-Payments. You can also host your own
backup server (rosiConserver) - please take a look on the github repository if you want to.
4. After funding the ROSI wallet of the plugin with some IOTAs you can go to any ROSI-supported
website and start streaming ;)
If you want to try out the server software, please see the github page.
Additional information will be added here later...
Donate
Donate using ROSI Payment Link
or
Alternative Standard IOTA Address:
TSZISBPVYDYEMFRYBFRNTKMKBILOKZRIZDZVUTHKOSHZIGNE9INJQGRBCEEPAEBOHVNHKOFECG9RMMOOWKKMDXBVAD
Thank you very much for your support!
ATTENTION: THIS TECHNOLOGY IS A PROTOTYPE - DO NOT USE WITH LARGE AMOUNTS OF IOTA AS THERE MAY
BE SEVERE BUGS IN THE CODE! AT THIS STAGE IT IS INTENDED FOR DEVELOPERS AND PEOPLE INTERESTED
IN THE TECHNOLOGY ONLY!